There is a saying: ‘If I have seen further than other men it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’.
Those words, spoken by the great Issac Newton, aptly describe many great people who have accomplished mammoth tasks in their lifetime and have still remained indebted to those who walked similar paths before them.
Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who saw a mountain and climbed it, has died at the age of 88. But it wasn’t just any mountain he saw, it was Mt Everest, the worlds highest peak. Along with his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, in 1953 Hillary set his sights on the summit of what had always been unattainable. And together they reached their summit.
Too many people see ‘mountains’ rather as obstacles instead of as objectives. In front of those mountains they also see the peaks and valleys and deem them too difficult to cross. So they don’t. People like Sir Edmund Hillary see nothing between themselves and their aim, whatever obstacles lay both hidden and in view they never allow those obstacles to get in the way.
Sir Edmund Hillary joins an elite group of people who have blazed trails on which others have walked since…Neal Armstrong and the men of Apollo 11; Roald Amundsen who was the first human to reach the North Pole; Scott and his reaching the South Pole. They made it possible for the rest of us to follow in their footsteps, they showed that it COULD be done. Most of us will never climb Mt Everest however throughout our lives will encounter our own ‘mountains’ to climb…whether we provide the shoulder for others to stand on, or use the shoulders of others to get a better view of the bigger picture in life, we will all need the tools of courage and sheer tenacity that drove Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay onwards to that great day on May 29th 1953.
Truly Sir Edmund Hillary is the ‘shoulders’ that so many ever since have stood on, truly one of the ‘giants’ of mankind.
Vale Sir Edmund Hillary.
photo by Graeme Mulholland
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